Roni Margulies

One day a few months ago
an old woman appeared
at the entrance of the underground station.
She was begging.
...

My first plane ride, how can I forget it.
We showed our tickets and exited the gate,
my grandad on one side, my mum on the other,
a blue bus came along, then left us
...

The spear thrust in front of the pavilion
announced that the Khan was seriously ill.
First, and most importantly, among his four sons
...

The Canberra was to be put in a dry dock
to be dismantled and sold off piece by piece.
Just a few lines in the papers.
...

In English it's easy, just add an s
In Turkish too, ler or lar will do
But in Greek plural suffixes
always leave you in a fix
...

His father brought him to this monastery
and left him with the monks when he was eight.
Said he had to go, but would soon be back.
There is no one now left who recalls why,
...

It is the year nineteen sixty-five, I have
one hand in my granddad's and a balloon in the other.
Machka, the bus stop at Tashlik, clearly a cold winter's day.
...

With my respects to Thomas Hardy

Was there something, some day,
somewhere, some time, I could have said
which could have made it all otherwise?
...

6. Neil Armstrong

We've brought 20 kilos of moonstone back.
They're being analysed in detail still.
...

Among the grass of Rembrandtpark
a flash of colour shone in the sun
and caught my eye,
...

They feel let down by the sea:
Some haven't flown over blue waters
or tasted fish for years,
haven't even seen waves break
...

I remember how a narrow beam of light
fell on my bed through the gap by the curtain,
one end waking me up by touching my eyelids,
the other resting on Elsa's cheek.
...

Diving into the black waters at Salacak every evening,
he'd swim, sometimes easily, sometimes against the waves,
forgetting all he'd left behind the instant he reached
the woman with jet-black hair and coal-black eyes.
...

My first snowfall at Beşiktaş, in the very places
I dreamt of during all those winters in London.
...

I had a blue pullover,
a cross between turquoise and sky blue.
It was my favourite, the one I wore most often.
We went through a lot together, it and I,
...

The Maas is the oldest river in the world.
It has flowed now for about a million years.
I never knew, they can apparently tell
the age of rivers, like that of men.
...

Nearly as many years ago as my age,
the Germans razed this city to the ground.
Not that there'd have been much resistence,
but the Nazis were in something of a rush.
...

Our lift talks to me, as I go up
or down, in a gentle, protective tone.
"We are here," she says "you may go".
She tells me the floor we have reached,
...

"Rot", says my dictionary, means "muddy".
"A" means water, this I found surprising. "Rotta",
then, is "muddy water", and "Dam" is obvious.
Rotterdam is a dam, therefore, on muddy waters.
...

I walk down the Dordtselaan almost every day
to buy bread and cigarettes at Albert Heijn's,
and malodorous French cheese, dark
Belgian beers and cold pork products.
...